Assessing and Exploiting Control Systems

Very practical information from an industry expert facilitator. With a lot of ideas in a 5-day course. Excellent!

Ravindranath Goswami, PowerGen

You won't find this kind of material in other training options. Also the labs look great.

David Jimenez, Pemex

This is not your traditional SCADA/ICS/IoT security course! How many courses send you home with your own PLC and a set of hardware/RF hacking tools?!? This course teaches hands-on penetration testing techniques used to test individual components of a control system, including embedded electronic field devices, network protocols, RF communications, Human Machine Interfaces (HMIs), and various forms of master servers and their ICS applications. Skills you will learn in this course will apply directly to systems such as the Smart Grid, PLCs, RTUs, smart meters, building management, manufacturing, Home Area Networks (HAN), smart appliances, SCADA, substation automation, and synchrophasors. This course is structured around the formal penetration testing methodology created by UtiliSec for the United States Department of Energy. Using this methodology and Control Things Pentest Platform (previously SamuraiSTFU), an open source Linux distribution for pentesting energy sector systems and other critical infrastructure, we will perform hands-on penetration testing tasks on user interfaces (on master servers and field device maintenance interfaces), control system protocols (modbus, DNP3, IEC 60870-5-104), RF communications (433MHz, 869MHz, 915MHz), and embedded circuit attacks (memory dumping, bus snooping, JTAG, and firmware analysis).

We will tie these techniques and exercises back to control system devices that can be tested using these techniques. The course exercises will be performed on a mixture of real world and simulated devices to give students the most realistic experience as possible in a portable classroom setting.

Advances in modern control systems such as the energy sector's Smart Grid has brought great benefits for asset owners/operators and customers alike, however these benefits have often come at a cost from a security perspective. With increased functionality and addition inter-system communication, modern control systems bring a greater risk of compromise that vendors, asset owners/operators, and society in general must accept to realize the desired benefits. To minimize this risk, penetration testing in conjunction with other security assessment types must be performed to minimize vulnerabilities before attackers can exploit critical infrastructures that exist in all countries around the world. Ultimately, this is the goal of this course, to help you know how, when, and where this can be done safely in your control systems.

Notice:

SANS Hosted are a series of classes presented by other educational providers to complement your needs for training outside of our current course offerings.

Course Syllabus

HST.1: ICS Architectures and Network Pentesting

CPE/CMU Credits: 6

Topics

Introduction to the NESCOR methodology for penetration testing

Preparing for a penetration test

Architecture reviews

Pentesting the master servers

Pentesting the user interfaces

Pentesting the network communications

Pentesting the embedded field devices

End-to-end assessment

Reporting

Architecture Reviews of major ICS and smart grid systems and protocols

HST.6: Deep Dive Projects

Overview

Day six is a special day where attendees can select to work deeper on topics covered in class. The instructor will be there to provide guidance and answer questions, but emphasis on this day is to do custom research, tool creation/enhancement, or further exploration.

Work on this day can be done individually or as small self-selected groups. Options include but are not limited to:

Creation of new ICS protocol fuzzers for Peach Fuzzer

Create/Enhance client tools for ICS protocol enumeration

Packetize data stream from 915MHz signal we extracted in class

Further USB decoding of USB traffic between the PLC and management software

Creation of programming or extraction tool for the PLC's management interface

CPE/CMU Credits: 6

Additional Information

Laptop Required

Laptop with at least two USB ports (three ports preferred). If you only have two USB ports and they are right next to each other, you will need to bring a USB extension cable.

Latest VMware Player, VMware Workstation, VWware Fusion installed. Other virtualization software such as Parallels or VirtualBox will probably work if the attendee is familiar with its functionality, however VMware Player should be prepared as a backup just in case.

Ability to disable all security software on their laptop such as Antivirus and/or firewalls

At least twenty (20) GB of hard drive space

At least four (4) GB of RAM

If you have additional questions about the laptop specifications, please contact laptop_prep@sans.org.

Prerequisites

Basic penetration testing experience is desirable, but not required. It is assumed that attendees will have no knowledge of ICS, Smart Grid, SCADA, or critical infrastructure. This course is designed for intermediate level security professionals, be they developers, managers, or penetration testers.